Unfair but balanced commentary on tax and budget policy, contemporary U.S. politics and culture, and whatever else happens to come up

Wednesday, September 11, 2013

Washington D.C. talk on corporate and international tax reform

Yesterday I Acela'd from New York to Washington D.C. and back again, so that I could spend most of my working day at a conference, held on Capital Hill in the Rayburn House Office Building, entitled The Federal Income Tax at 100: How Did We Get Here and Where Should We Go Next? A Forum of Tax Policy Experts and Tax Policy Makers.

My mission at the conference was to give a 15-minute talk on corporate and international tax reform. In the intro for our panel (which discussed reform options within the existing federal income tax generally), the moderator expressed the hope that we would point the way forward, assuming that more dramatic reform options (discussed by the preceding panel) were unavailable. But my talk focused instead on why it is so hard to specify the best way forward on corporate and international tax reform, even in the absence of political obstacles. A PDF version of the slides that I used as detailed lecture notes / outline, though I ended up not projecting them, is available here.

As the saying goes, it's always better to leave the audience wanting more than wishing you would finish already. In that spirit, the last text box on the last slide is pretty much a shout-out for my forthcoming Oxford .U. Press book, Fixing U.S. International Taxation.

About Me

I am the Wayne Perry Professor of Taxation at New York University Law School. My research mainly emphasizes tax policy, government transfers, budgetary measures, social insurance, and entitlements reform. My most recent books are (1) Decoding the U.S. Corporate Tax (2009) and (2) Taxes, Spending, and the U.S. Government's March Toward Bankruptcy (2006). My other books include Do Deficits Matter? (1997), When Rules Change: An Economic and Political Analysis of Transition Relief and Retroactivity (2000), Making Sense of Social Security Reform (2000), Who Should Pay for Medicare? (2004), Taxes, Spending, and the U.S. Government's March Towards Bankruptcy (2006), Decoding the U.S. Corporate Tax (2009), and Fixing the U.S. International Tax Rules (forthcoming). I am also the author of a novel, Getting It. I am married with two children (boys aged 24 and 21) as well as three cats. For my wife Pat's quilting blog, see Patwig’s Blog.